Pearson: More than physical fixes needed in Parliament of Canada

Portraits of past prime ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliot Trudeau hang on the walls as cleaning items stand ready in the lobby of the temporary House of Commons in preparation for the opening of Parliament . (File photo)

When I first entered my member of Parliament office in Parliament’s West Block in 2006, I noticed two things.

The first was the view from the fourth-floor office windows. It was spectacular, overlooking Centre Block and the bronze statue of Lester Pearson directly below.

The second was the yellow caution tape affixed to certain portions of the ceiling. When I asked what it was for, I received the nervous reply that it was to keep the asbestos in the ceiling from falling onto my desk.

I was to discover the next day that Centre Block, with its marvellous clock tower, the chambers for both the House and the Senate, and historic relics, had an even bigger asbestos problem, along with bad wiring and poor plumbing. It was in clear need of renovation.

It took years, but eventually the appropriations were made to clear out Centre Block and move the parliamentary chamber to West Block, just below where my much-loved office was, so that Centre Block renovations can take place.

Those renovations will be complicated and ingenious. Last week, for the first time, the new House of Commons chamber opened in West Block and will remain there for likely 10 years until the major work in Centre Block is complete and everything moves back to its historic home.

With a new location for the next decade, it isn’t improper to hope for a new outlook. A fresh take on politics if all parties could better collaborate on tackling the greatest problems of a generation: climate change, co-operation with the provinces, paying down debt, infrastructure investment and immigration.

And that’s just our domestic challenges. The global tensions running across our screens 24/7 have their implications on our country, too.

But that new era of political effectiveness might not happen. Warnings from federal leaders that the election later this year might be one of the most brutal in decades hardly elicit confidence in Canadians. When the party leaders seem to agree only on how bad the next contest will be, there is a sense that the great patchwork of compromises that historically represented Canada’s democracy could be fraying.

When a few months ago Atlantic magazine and the Guardian newspaper asked whether the once great democracies of the West had what it takes to fix their problems, they had to conclude the answer was unknown.

There are no outstanding issues that should cause such alarm in Canada. While there remain numerous tensions across the country, there are clear signs of advances in key areas — enough that other nations continue to envy Canada’s ability to hold everything together in a complex system of federalism.

And yet, here we are, with our leaders bracing us to expect the worst in the next election.

It’s easy to blame our politicians for the dysfunction, but they are reflecting the dysfunctional passions of citizens. Canadians hold sharp opinions as a birthright, but rarely have we proved to be so disconnected from one another. Our politicians pick up on this and, in their sincere desire to pacify the electorate, succeed in inflaming it.

There was another time in our history when government operations were moved out of Centre Block for renovations. In this week, 103 years ago, the Centre Block was gutted by fire, and government was forced to move to numerous locations around the region to continue functioning.

Politics weren’t easy at that time, as the young nation struggled with regional tensions and a Great War that challenged its relationship with Britain and the Crown. But commentators at the time noted a new sense of purpose emerging from the political parties.

One Conservative MP stood up in the makeshift House of Commons and recalled an observation by the late prime minister John A. Macdonald — “There were, unfortunately, no great principles on which parties were divided; politics became a mere struggle for office” — and wondered if it weren’t time to put such contentions aside for the sake of the nation.

That rebuilding of a parliamentary spirit soon followed.

Perhaps in its new chamber, today’s Parliament can help history repeat itself.

Glen Pearson is co-director of the London Food Bank and a former Liberal MP for the riding of London North Centre.glen@glenpearson.ca

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